Some Confusions In Ebook Long-term Preservation

According to domestic and foreign researches, ebook can be divided into three types, ebook digitalized from traditional books, electric-only ebook and collective produced ebook based on the internet. Compared with other digital resources, the implementation for ebook long-term preservation is confronted with special confusions.Generally speaking, the confusions can be divided into two categories, common perplexity and individual perplexity. Common perplexity refers to the universal co-existed confusions which will be faced by all kind of ebooks in the process of their long-term preservation. Individual perplexity refers to the special problems generated in their long-term preservation of these three different types of ebooks due to their specific characteristics.There are three common perplexities for ebooks to be long-term preserved. Firstly, the characteristic of virtual possession makes it difficult for users to have a long-term access to ebooks as the users only have the right to use instead of essentially owning it after they buy ebooks. Secondly, the format diversification of ebooks brings difficulties for users’ access because of the exited diversified versions. Thirdly, there are also perplexity comes from the digital rights management when saving the content of e-books which are aroused out of the intellectual property protection to commercial e-books.Then comes the individual perplexity. Firstly, the main difficulty of the traditional ebook is focused on its quality in digital conversion; Secondly, the preserving perplexities of electric-only ebook include the problems put forward by the self-publishing patterns to agencies, the problems of the embedded objects, the stability of the content, the imperfect legal deposit system, the unique identifier of ebooks. Finally, the perplexities of collective produced ebooks contain the problems of property license, the confusion of its preservation value and the deficiency of preserving motivation.